Inner Space officially started on the 26th of December 2010-with prayers. A small, family and friends, get together cum prayer meeting was held to make the occasion meaningful. Each person present was required to read a prayer that inspired or touched them. It was an attempt to express what prayer meant to each of us within the context of wisdom of several faiths. Passages were quoted from the Bible, the Quran and the Upanishads. Some people read prayers they had written and others quoted spiritual poetry. Some interesting readings have been put down here:
“For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall not receive;
And if you should enter into it to humble yourself you shall not be lifted;
Or even if you should enter into it to beg for the good of others you shall not be heard.
It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.”
–Kahlil Gibran on Prayer
“Different is that which is preferable; and different, indeed, is the pleasurable. These two serving different purposes, blind man. Good accrues to him who, of these two, chooses the preferable. He, who chooses the pleasurable falls from the goal.”
–Katho Upanishad
” In the name of Allah, the most Merciful, the most Beneficent!
All praise belongs to Allah, the Lord of the universe!
The most Merciful, the most Beneficent!
Master of the Day of Judgment!
You alone do we worship, and You alone do we ask for help!
Guide us to the Straight Path!
The path of those upon whom You have bestowed Your blessings!
Not the path of those who earned Your wrath, or erred and went astray.”
-The Quran – Chapter 1
“Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.”
“Work is love made visible.And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.”
–Kahli Gibran on Work
As I stand before roads anew,
The beginning of a dream to serve and grow,
I pray to You Lord,
Grant me the strength
To be as brave as a soldier
And as humble as the trees
As sharp as an eagle
And as steady as a tortoise
To think like a scientist
And be like a friend
To care like a mother
And learn like a baby
–A Prayer By Malini Krishnan
Today, I pray to God
To enable each of us to see and awaken the God within us and in all those around us
To give us the courage to see that we have all the strength we need,
The wisdom to understand that all the knowledge in the world is within our reach
The power to accept that we are the creators of our Universe
The humility to realize that everyone we meet is fighting a harder battle
The faith to know that everything is okay in the end
And the belief that the best is yet to come
–A Prayer By Mahima Gupta
